Asking the Wrong Questions

There is so much wrong with this report that it's hard to know where to start.

The findings may help solve the puzzle of why, if homosexuality is hereditary, it hasn't already disappeared from the gene pool, since gay people are less likely to reproduce than heterosexuals.

This is the kind of statement that falls apart to anyone with any knowledge whatsoever of cultural history. It's based on the assumption that throughout history, the phenomenon that we know as "gay" has existed as it exists now, when that's obviously not the case. I'm not even going to comment on a howler like "less likely to reproduce," except to ask "Since when does 'less likely' translate as 'not'?"

Before the late nineteenth century, there was no such thing as "a homosexual." As Kinsey found in his studies of male sexuality, desire seems spread across a continuum -- say what you will about Kinsey, his findings were, as much as is humanly possible, based on what men actually do, not what they're willing to admit.

The expression of sexual orientation seems to be largely culturally determined. As this report notes:

Vasey said he suspects that the conditions just aren't right in modern Western societies for this genetic predisposition to express itself.

One major cultural difference is the individualistic nature of Western society, compared with the collectivistic culture in Samoa.

"We think we're close to our families, but Samoans are really close to their families," Vasey said. "People are more geographically connected in Samoa."

Additionally, there is less discrimination against fa'afafine, compared with the still-widespread homophobia that exists in many Western societies. Even if many Western gay men wanted to be doting uncles, their families might not always encourage it.

Vasey said the next step is to test whether this trend exists in other non-Western cultures where males with same-sex attractions are also accepted as a unique category.

A corollary here is that in Western societies, that ingrained homophobia will also work against men pairing with other men, and in favor of men entering into heterosexual marriages and even having children, regardless of their sexual orientation. (I've known several men who were married before coming out -- we all have. And some of them had children. As I keep saying, we gay, we're not sterile.) The more conservative the milieu, the more likely that scenario would be, I think.

Historically, there's no reason to believe men with same-sex attraction were not having children. The shining example, of course, is classical Greece, where it was expected that not only would a youth take an older male lover, but that he would also eventually get married and have children of his own. (It wasn't just Greece -- there seems to be evidence for a similar institution in ancient Albania, and one of the grounds on which a woman could divorce her husband under ancient Irish law was that he spent too much time with his male lover.)

Both of the studies reported focus on kin selection as a mechanism for insuring the inheritance of "gay" genes, and I don't dispute the possibility -- I have, in fact, brought it up in other discussions. But there's no reason that has to be the only mechanism. My major irritation is with the cultural blinders that cause people to think there is such a "puzzle" to begin with. Nor am I discounting an obvious influence from right-wing anti-gay rhetoric: there's a vested interest in pooh-poohing the idea of a genetic component to sexual orientation because in the wingnut world view, anything that contravenes those 4,000 year old tribal taboos from which we are to pick and choose must be a "choice."

But FTLOP, people, back off and look at what you're saying.